By Olufunke Baruwa

There is an old African saying that a king who surrounds himself only with praise singers soon mistakes applause for progress. Every leader, however powerful, needs people who are willing to speak uncomfortable truths not because they dislike him, but because they care about the nation he leads.

That is why the recent visit of the leadership of the Catholic Church to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was significant because it brought together one of Nigeria’s most influential religious bodies, which chose to use the opportunity to present an honest assessment of the country’s condition. The Bishops spoke about insecurity, economic hardship, rising poverty, unemployment and the growing frustration among ordinary Nigerians. They urged the government to respond more decisively to the challenges confronting citizens.

Their intervention was neither a political rally nor an opposition press conference. It was a candid conversation between moral leaders and the country’s elected President. They echoed concerns that millions of Nigerians express daily in markets, churches, mosques, offices and homes.

Yet what followed was sadly predictable. Instead of engaging the substance of their message, some of the President’s supporters turned on the messengers. His Eminence, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, one of Nigeria’s most respected clerics and public intellectuals, became a particular target. Social media was awash with accusations that he was partisan, anti-government or motivated by politics rather than patriotism.

That reaction says far more about the state of our political culture than it does about the Cardinal. It also raises a far more important question: in a democracy, who should tell the President the truth if respected religious leaders, elder statesmen and independent voices are discouraged from doing so?

The Patriotic Duty of Honest Counsel

A good number of Nigeria’s religious leaders have never existed merely to conduct worship services. Throughout our history, they have served as the nation’s moral conscience.

During military rule, many stood courageously against dictatorship, arbitrary detention, injustice and the abuse of power. They defended democratic freedoms when many others remained silent. Their interventions were not always welcomed by those in authority, but history has largely vindicated them. The same principle applies today.

When religious leaders speak about hunger, insecurity or the suffering of ordinary Nigerians, they are not contesting elections, lobbying for appointments or starting abstract policy debates. They are reflecting the lived experiences of millions of worshippers, stories of families unable to feed themselves, parents struggling to pay school fees, workers whose salaries have been overtaken by inflation, young graduates searching endlessly for jobs and communities living under the constant fear of kidnapping and violence.

The Catholic Church has long contributed to nation-building through its schools, hospitals, humanitarian work and advocacy for justice. Successive Catholic bishops have criticised military regimes and civilian administrations alike whenever they believed national values were being undermined. Cardinal Onaiyekan’s record reflects that same consistency. He has spoken against corruption, insecurity, electoral malpractice and poor governance under different governments and political parties.

One may disagree with his conclusions. That is legitimate. What is neither legitimate nor helpful is attempting to delegitimise him simply because his assessment is uncomfortable.

Constructive criticism should never be mistaken for hostility. Democracies thrive when religious institutions, civil society organisations, labour unions, professional associations, traditional rulers, academics and the media are free to speak honestly without being branded enemies of government.

Indeed, leaders often benefit more from sincere critics than enthusiastic supporters. Praise tells a leader what he wants to hear. Honest criticism tells him what he needs to know.

When Truth Becomes Treason

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the reaction to the bishops’ visit is not disagreement itself but the growing tendency to delegitimise anyone who expresses concern about the country’s direction.

Increasingly, public discourse appears divided into two camps: those who defend government unconditionally and those portrayed as enemies simply for asking difficult questions. That is neither healthy nor sustainable.

A democratically elected President governs both those who voted for him and those who did not. His supporters have every right to defend his policies. Equally, critics have the constitutional right to question those policies. Democracy requires both voices.

Unfortunately, our politics increasingly rewards loyalty over honesty. Public officials become reluctant to acknowledge policy shortcomings for fear of appearing disloyal, while political supporters sometimes interpret every criticism as a personal attack on the President rather than an invitation to improve governance. The result is an echo chamber where truth becomes politically inconvenient. Once leaders hear only applause, they gradually lose touch with the lived experiences of ordinary citizens.

The questions raised by the bishops therefore deserve thoughtful answers rather than personal attacks. Has insecurity ceased to threaten communities across Nigeria? Are food prices no longer crushing household budgets? Has youth unemployment suddenly disappeared? Can we honestly say that millions of Nigerians are not struggling under the weight of economic reforms?

If these concerns remain real and they clearly do, then those who raise them should not be dismissed simply because their message is uncomfortable.

Listening Is Leadership

One of the most underrated qualities of effective leadership is the willingness to listen. Listening is not weakness. It is confidence. A confident leader understands that criticism is not always opposition. Sometimes it is valuable feedback.

President Tinubu has demonstrated remarkable political resilience throughout his career. Those who have followed his journey know he has endured intense criticism and difficult political battles over several decades. That same resilience should encourage an openness to differing perspectives.

The Catholic Bishops did not organise a protest outside the Presidential Villa. They accepted an invitation, met respectfully with the President and conveyed their concerns directly. That is precisely how democratic engagement should work.

Whether one agrees with every point they raised is beside the point. The more important issue is preserving the civic space for respected national voices to speak honestly without attracting organised campaigns of vilification.

A Democracy Needs More Conversations, Not Fewer

Nigeria’s challenges are too complex for government alone to solve. Economic recovery, security, constitutional reform, youth employment and national cohesion all require the contributions of citizens and institutions beyond the corridors of power. Government should therefore welcome credible external feedback, not fear it.

Religious institutions, civil society organisations, academia, traditional institutions, the private sector and the media all possess valuable insights drawn from daily engagement with Nigerians. Their observations should be regarded as national assets rather than political irritants because democracies grow stronger when difficult conversations occur respectfully instead of being suppressed.

The measure of a mature democracy is not the absence of criticism. It is the ability to receive criticism without descending into hostility.

Ultimately, President Tinubu will not be judged by how vigorously his supporters defended him online or how effectively his critics challenged him. He will be judged by whether Nigerians became safer, more prosperous and more hopeful during his presidency. Those outcomes cannot be achieved by silencing independent voices. They require listening, reflection and the humility to acknowledge that no government has a monopoly of wisdom.

The Catholic bishops have discharged what they believe to be their moral responsibility. Government must continue to discharge its constitutional responsibility. And the rest of us must defend something even more important than any individual politician or cleric: the democratic space where citizens can still speak truth to power without being treated as enemies of the state.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

I was a slim teenager on August 15, 1983 but what I saw was fat and unforgettable.

I came close, chest-to-chest close, to death. A big box containing my parents’ certificates, documents was on my head when they stopped me.

With eyes red from rage and other things, they belowed at me.

I explained, tears in my eyes and voice.

The streets were empty.

Residents of Ikirun, in today’s Ifelodun Local Government Area of Osun State were all behind doors. Only ‘the boys’ were on patrol.

The sky was dark from smoke of burning houses, sawmills, shops.

My father’s Action Group identity card was our get-out-of-tragedy card. And yes, my father was a politician years before I was born and he could have lost everything that day.

Our landlord, Alhaji Atanda, was not so lucky. He lost houses and sawmills. The drums of palm oil that his wife just took delivery of were kicked on to their sides until there was a big red pool of red oil.

He, I believe, also lost the will to live because he locked himself up in his burning house. His friends had to break doors to pull him out.

My knees shaking and heart panting so loudly I thought it was going to jump out and run on its own legs.

I saw flashing blades of newly sharpened cutlasses.

I saw blood. I saw and felt fear.

I heard screams of pain and despair .

I saw destruction of property and livelihood, the kind that made the owners give up on life.

What was the occasion? Was it a war? Yes and No. A communal war? Yes, a war where brothers forgot they were brothers because they wore different party emblems. It was supposed to be just an election, governorship election but the two leading political parties, the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and the National Party of Nigeria ( NPN) turned a simple contest into a bloodbath that left in its trail widows, widowers, orphans and painful gnashing of the teeth. It was a terrible season.

August 15, 2026, 43 years after that day of pain and sorrow, history beckons again, with another two leading parties in a governorship race in Osun State, I am just wondering and worried. Imagine the coincidence! The governorship election held on August 13, 1983. The trouble announced itself on August 15, 1983 after a radio broadcast by a politician. Another August 15 is almost here. And another politician has spoken, his hands on the two legs of a soundly sleeping ghost!

Read Also: Echoes of Trauma: When nobody is listening

According, to George Santayana, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In Osun, are those who should remember 1983 remembering it correctly? Or they think it was reality TV that must have a Season 2 in 2026?

There are statements that should never come from the lips of a governor, a leader.

There are memories that responsible leaders should never awaken.

And there are ghosts that should be left in their graves, like the 1983 ghost.

As Osun prepares for the August 15 governorship election, political temperatures have risen, with accusations and counter-accusations between the major camps over violence, intimidation and alleged plots to influence the outcome. Against that backdrop, reports that Governor Ademola Adeleke invoked the possibility of “1983” if the election is not properly conducted have naturally stirred anxiety because that year occupies a painful place in the political memory of old Oyo State and in the hearts of victims like me.

Young Nigerians may not understand why older people suddenly became uncomfortable as soon as after-election violence is mentioned. It is not because people of my generation saw it, saw fathers being pushed into a burning house. The smell of burning and burnt human flesh scars you forever.

Those who were born after the dust settled may think 1983 is just another year in a history book.

It is not.

It is a scar.

It is a wound.

It is a cemetery of dreams.

It is a reminder that democracy can bleed and go into coma.

Old Oyo State was not just Oyo as we know it today. It included what is now Osun State. When old men in Ilesa, Ikirun, Iragbiji, Ororuwo, Ila, Ife, Ede, Iwo, Ogbomoso, Ibadan, Saki or Oyo mention “1983,” they are not discussing politics. When the people of Owo, Ado Ekiti, Akure, Ondo remember 1983, what rushes through their minds is a lot.

They are remembering fear.

They remember sleeping with one eye open.

They remember mothers hiding children under beds.

They remember fathers refusing to light lanterns at night.

They remember the smell of burning buildings.

They remember neighbours becoming enemies because they belonged to different political parties.

They remember families divided forever.

I, Olufunke, remember the night my family distributed our belongings in the homes of daddy’s friends and former school mates and we the children slept on top of our boxes and bags, all six of us. I must not put into words what I think of those who want to make the 1983 demons walk through Osun, again!

The 1983 election remains one of the darkest chapters in the history of Western Nigeria.

That governorship election that pitted the late Chief Bola Ige against the late Dr. Victor Omololu Olunloyo ended in bitter controversy. Allegations of manipulation filled the air waves the morning after. Before you could say ‘Up Awo’, old Ondo and the old Oyo states became battlefields. Streets became war zones.

People stopped arguing with words. They started arguing with fire, cutlasses and juju.

The violence that followed consumed homes, businesses and lives. Political offices were attacked. Property went up in flames. Communities that had lived peacefully suddenly found themselves trapped in cycles of revenge. Historians regard the post-election unrest in old Oyo and neighbouring areas as one of the crises that weakened the Second Republic before the military coup of December 31, 1983.

Eventually, it became clear that nobody truly won. Not Bola Ige. Not Victor Olunloyo, Not Lekan Balogun. Certainly not Adekunle Ajasin and Akin Omoboriowo; not UPN or NPN, most certainly not the ordinary people.

History has a cruel sense of humour like that.

The politicians eventually moved on and later became friends once again.

Many of the victims never recovered.

That is why leaders should choose their words carefully. Political speeches are not ordinary conversations.

They are like struck marches. Sometimes they fall on wet ground.

Sometimes they fall inside a petrol station.

In an atmosphere already charged with allegations of attacks, destruction of campaign materials and fears of electoral violence, every word from political leaders carries enormous weight. Public appeals from different stakeholders—including security agencies and peace initiatives—have consistently urged all parties to avoid inflammatory rhetoric and commit to peaceful conduct before, during and after the election.

No election is worth another widow. Governorship seats should not be erected in blood. Nobody deserves to become an orphan because someone wants to serve his state.

No political office is valuable enough to justify another generation growing up with stories of fathers who never returned home.

This is not about one political party. This is about wisdom, fairness and fear of God.

It is not about whether you support Accord, APC or any other platform.

It is about whether we have learnt anything from history.

Leadership demands restraint.

A governor’s greatest responsibility is not merely to seek votes.

It is to lower the political temperature.

When followers hear a leader mention a tragic historical event, some may interpret it as a warning.

Others may hear it as a prediction.

The reckless ones may even mistake it for permission – or an order.

That is why words matter.

One careless sentence can travel faster than a convoy of security vehicles.

One reckless speech can do more damage than hundreds of thugs.

Those who witnessed 1983 are now grandparents.

Some still lower their voices when telling those stories.

Some still remember where they hid.

Some still remember the neighbour whose shop was burnt.

Some still remember the family that fled overnight and never returned.

Some still remember the smoke, the screams and the burnt bodies.

Many of today’s politicians were children then. Many of today’s voters were not even born.

That is precisely why those memories should educate us—not recruit us.

If there is any lesson from 1983, it is that electoral victories are temporary.

The pain of violence is permanent.

Governors come and go.

Senators come and go.

Political parties change names.

But widows remain widows. Orphans remain orphans.

Burnt houses do not rebuild themselves.

The houses destroyed in my hometown were empty until the owners saved up enough money to rebuild themselves.

A destroyed economy does not recover overnight.

Trust, once broken between neighbours, may take generations to heal.

Osun has earned a reputation over the years for producing scholars, judges, teachers, first rate journalists, artists, artistes, engineers and public servants.

Let it also become known as the state that refused to repeat history.

The greatest victory on August 15 will not be who occupies the Government House.

The greatest victory will be if every voter returns home safely.

If no mother waits endlessly for a missing son, if no child sleeps in a displaced person’s camp because politicians could not control their tongues and ire.

If no hospital receives victims of avoidable clashes, that would be the sweetest victory.

Politicians must remember that elections last only one day.

Governance lasts years.

History lasts forever.

The generation that witnessed 1983 has already paid the tuition fees.

They learnt the lesson with blood and tears.

Must today’s generation pay the same fees again?

I hope not because nations that keep repeating painful history eventually become prisoners of it.

And Osun deserves better.

Nigeria deserves clear-headed leaders who will not afflict them with irreversible damages.

May August 15 produce ballots and not bullets.

May it produce winners instead of widows.

May it produce celebration and not sorrow.

And on a last note, anyone who threatens me with the ghosts of 1983 can never be my friend. Yes.

Let that ghost rest in peace, finally.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

An historian and a professor at Northwest University in Chicago profoundly posited: ”History does not repeat itself. We make new mistakes”. I have thought that over deeply, and would like us to think this over too. See for ourselves if this is true. I find it to be true. History does not repeat itself. We live in Cyberspace now. We own the internet space and some other recent inventions.

Unsurprisingly, Cardinal John Onaiyekan’s recent critique of the federal government echoes a recurring historical pattern in Nigeria where religious leaders confront civilian administrations for economic hardship, only to face swift rebukes from the presidency accusing them of bias or breaching confidentiality.

Interestingly, some years ago, about twenty-seven or so: Pope John Paul II, the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City, visited the then military Head of State, General Abacha and delivered a similar message which was also dismissed by the Late Head of State. 

We’re all a living witnesses to the eventualities after that visit. The Catholic Bishops are like the forerunners of God. You can’t play God. It is absolutely important to be circumspect, wise and listen to the voice of God.

Similarly, Cardinal John Onaiyekan exemplifies the intersection of moral authority and political governance, serving as an outspoken voice on national affairs, a mediator in interfaith relations, and a critic of state power. 

His recent public disclosures regarding a closed-door meeting with the Nigerian presidency highlight the delicate and often tense friction between institutional authority and religious conscience.

President Bola Tinubu’s remark that “all is fair in politics” during a meeting with Catholic bishops sparked swift public concern, with critics like Cardinal John Onaiyekan warning that such an a-win-by-all-means attitude threatens democratic rules and national stability.

This statements: “all is fair in politics”, body languages, previous undemocratic tendencies and actions. I dare say; that, there is conflict of interest which has the potential to facilitate electoral malpractices and cast doubt on the credibility of the entire process.

In essence, electoral malpractices in Nigeria stem from a fundamental conflict of interest where political actors and institutions tasked with upholding democratic integrity are simultaneously incentivized to manipulate outcomes for personal or partisan survival.

THREATS OF DO-or-DIE POLITICAL

Electoral Violence: Treats votes as a battleground, causing fear, harm, and loss of life.

Weakened Trust: Destroys faith in fair voting and public institutions.Exclusion: Leaves out youths, women, and poor citizens from true leadership.

BELOW ARE SOME IMPORTANT ACCOUNTS

“In God’s name and in the name of the poor masses of this nation, I beg all those who are now running the affairs of the nation to sincerely examine their consciences before God, and seek divine guidance in all that they do. One thing that is obvious to all is that we cannot continue along the present path of stagnation, confrontation and general tension in the land. The Lord has been kind and patient with our land. May we not try his patience beyond limits!”

– Excerpt from Onaiyekan’s homily at the Mass of his installation as Archbishop of Abuja in June 1994, upbraiding the Abacha regime for the post-June 1993 crisis in the nation.

Some prophets have never been afraid of calling Caesar to order.

Fast-forward, on the 31/07/26 at an interview with the ARISE NEWS; Cardinal John Onaiyekan warned that Nigeria’s 2027 elections face severe credibility threats because the current administration is allegedly determined to retain power by any means, rendering citizen votes potentially meaningless despite procedural fairness.

KEY CONCERNS RAISED BY ARCHBISHOP ONAIYEKAN

Win-at-All-Costs Mentality: The government possesses vast state resources and is deploying them to secure victory, moving past healthy political competition into absolute control.

Flawed Electoral Commission Appointments: The practice of the president appointing election officials creates systemic bias and public distrust, as standard party members often fill these independent roles.

Value of Votes: True democracy fails when administrative power and institutional control outweigh the actual choices made by citizens at the ballot box. Required Reforms for Credible Elections

Independent Leadership: Removing the power of the president to appoint the leadership of the electoral commission and transferring it to a neutral, independent entity.

Systemic Restructuring: Rebuilding institutional frameworks so that election umpires demonstrate impartiality through actions rather than empty verbal assurances.

Performance Focus: Urging the government to prioritize solving real national problems—such as the economy, corruption, and insecurity—rather than focusing entirely on political survival.

In conclusion; the avoidable challenge is for us not have history repeating itself because those events change, science advances and culture grows and shrinks, humans repeat errors thus repeating history over and over again.

Citizen Richard ODUSANYA. Public Affairs Enthusiast and Good Governance Advocate

[email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel

Penultimate weekend’s win of the Nigerian Bar Association presidency by Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN, is the third consecutive time her South West zone would be saddled with an unwanted representative at the helm of the lawyers’ body. And this time, it hits closer home considering that the disfavoured, is also Yoruba. That sounds like Olusegun Obasanjo’s first presidential mount.

The “emergence” of the Bar’s first elected female president, has further unclad the lawyers’ association, widely seen as consistently hemorrhaging value and credibility since democratic rule returned, like the woman with the issue of blood in Mark 5:25-34 who bled non-stop for 12 years before Christ’s help came.
Hopefully, NBA will be rescued too, before it’s too late.

That Muyiwa Akinboro SAN; the anointed of the South West, also lost scandalously, even conceding the second position in the three-person race, to little-known Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, is the death knell for Egbe Amofin, the supposed umbrella body for South West lawyers, which should ordinarily be a primus of the three zones rotating the body’s headship, considering that the Yoruba have dominated the legal profession since fellow Ijesa and history maker, Christopher Alexander Sapara Williams began practising in Lagos on January 13, 1888 after being called to the English Bar on November 17, 1879.

He would go on to lead the Bar for 15 years, between 1900 and 1915, unfortunately dying in office on March 15. 1915 at just 59.

Infact, until the Bar presidency was made rotational among North, West (South West plus Edo and Delta) and East, the dominance of the South West, especially its big names practising in Lagos, was unmistakable in the eminence of the leadership roll-call.
All now, seem a mere reminiscence of the nostalgic, for the Yoruba elders of the Western Bar, whose influence is now at ground zero.

By convention, since the adoption of the rotational presidency, the leadership of the producing zone, is always expected to present a consensus candidate to the other two zones for bloc support and the last time the Egbe Amofin would appear to have a say in the Western zone producing the president of the Bar, was the unanimous adoption of now-late Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, in July, 2008. With the West presenting him to others as its sole pick, he was even elected unopposed, making him the 24th president of the association.

To emerge as the sole presidential candidate for the then-prestigious post, was a clear signpost of the remarkable dominant influence of Egbe Amofin on the Western Bar and sadly too, the successful outing 18 years ago, would be the beginning of a skid and the elders who used to be oracles of a sort, now seem out of sorts in sorting out whatever the problem was/is. Several of them are my egbon, but their failure to buck the worrying trend, is inexcusable.

Since Akeredolu, it has been the turn of the Western Bar thrice to lead the lawyers’ body and thrice, South West leadership has failed, losing twice to its junior partner; Edo/Delta (first to Augustine Aleghe in 2014 and Olumide Akpata in 2020, both incidentally from Edo). Even now that the two-state junior partner would magnanimously stay out of the race it could easily win again, leaving the field open for three Yoruba contestants, an unwanted candidate still won.
What is the Egbe missing?

Today, Nigeria’s jurisprudential colossus and dear uncle, Chief Oluwole Oladapo Olanipekun, SAN, is easily the most towering figure of the Western Bar. Respected nationally and recognised internationally, the question is, why are his own back home, either not hearing him or turning what the Yoruba will call eti ikun (the striped ground squirrel’s proverbial deaf ear, though the animal isn’t actually deaf but always daring enough for humans to come very close to it before making a move for an escape route) to his admonition and endorsement?.

Before the contentious poll, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria I was visiting in his Banana Island, Lagos home gave me an insight into the fraying within the South West Bar over consensus endorsement and mentioned a former governor of Lagos State as the prime mover of the Oyinkansola agenda. The president-elect is a protégée of the former Lagos ruler who is also a Silk.

With the outgoing president, Afam Osigwe, SAN, seen as actively pushing the same agenda, my host, who is openly anti-Igbo’s brand of politicking (he’s always accusing them of demanding from others what they can’t give and he says he is ready to give anything and everything to ensure Obi loses woefully in Lagos), was very displeased that Osigwe was trying to choose his successor for the Western Bar. He told me he equally refused to heed the NBA president’s plea to help rein in some young lawyers in the zone, vehemently opposed to the alleged facilitating role Osigwe was playing for Oyinkansola.

It would seem the Osigwe coup worked and the ex-governor SAN, got his wish, despite the eventual winner and Akangbe; the first runner-up, vying from the same Lagos space. Of the trio who ran, the griping, failed-anointed, Kuta-born Akinboro has the biggest name recognition, having served as the national scribe of the association between 2010 and 2012 during the headship of J.B Daudu from the Northern zone. Having also led the Abuja branch as both secretary and chairman, endorsed by Egbe Amofin, supposedly representing all South West lawyers and presented to both the Eastern and Northern Bars as the West’s pick, it should concern the endorsing senior lawyers in his camp that he got so badly trounced by a starter like Badejo-Okusanya whose husband’s name recognition in the PR community can’t also be overlooked.

To cap it, the president-elect just made SAN less than a year ago.
Yes, shocking upset isn’t a rarity in political contests and endorsements, even when region-wide, like what Akinboro supposedly got, can backfire, but losing consistently, is losing relevance or playing the wrong cards.

Is it likely the South West has been backing the wrong tree since the Akeredolu win, or other zones are deliberately undermining, to subdue its influence, by going rogue with its anointed?
I will first go with self-sabotage. I believe the S/W leaders were consumed by their assumed invincibility in the making of the Akeredolu presidency (I wish he lived longer; he could have been a courageous Nigerian president of Yoruba descent) and didn’t move early with changing times.

Just six years after the Akeredolu nomination success, the zone’s leadership had become so fragmented that it could not agree on a consensus candidate when it was its turn again. The trio of Mrs Funke Adekoya, Chief Niyi Akintola and Deacon Dele Adesina, all Silk, refused to have any of them as the sole candidate, despite the open preference of Chief Olanipekun for his in-law, Adesina, also a former national secretary of the association, during the presidency of same legal luminary.

Given what I know, I will say 2014 was the turning point for the South West part of the Western Bar and unless it quickly restructures, it’s going to be a forever free fall into antiquation.

The two times South West lost to “outsiders” in the “junior partner” from Edo; tribe politics was its undoing as well as the empty pride of the race itself. At a point during the 2014 internal wrangling, I became a self-appointed conciliator, making midnight calls to candidates and their main backers and strident opponents, pleading with them to close ranks to forestall a possible “steal” by an outsider, when all I was supposed to be, was a journalist, merely reporting all sides to the friction. All the egbon in the crisis were adamant though I must acknowledge the statesmanship of Uncle Wole during our conversations.

Well, what was not supposed to happen, happened. Alegeh, from Edo, stole in and “stole” a win, from the three bickering Yoruba candidates, whose collective votes far outstripped the winner’s total. The Yoruba themselves will say “okere gori iroko, oju ode da” (the squirrel, like a prized target, has irretrievably escaped, the hunter is left with a disappointed visage and regret).

One of the feuding Yoruba trio infamously ejected delegates he camped in an Abuja hotel the moment he was pronounced defeated and the rest is history. Today, all the actors in the unpleasantness that governed the fractious and botched consensus nomination are still associates. So why the proverbial fight-to-finish of 2014? I put it down to sheer ignorance and arrogance though lawyers are supposed to be learned than the rest of humanity.

By 2020, the Western Bar’s junior partner had mastered the soft underbelly of the South West and predictably again, it was multiple candidates in same Adesina and Babatunde Ajibade, with Edo/Delta axis coming with a sole candidate again. Again, unity trumped divided majority. Again, South West’s anointed, Adesina came third, behind Ajibade and the eventual winner, Edo’s Olumide Akpata who wasn’t even a Senior Advocate!

And did he win handsomely! Apart from winning more than 54% of the total votes cast, his total votes were more than the two Yoruba candidates’, combined! That was when Egbe Amofin should have recalibrated but it would seem the regional platform is doomed for the lych bell to toll for it.
For a body that is almost toothless, why should anybody fear its bark. So when my Banana Island host told me the ex-governor Oyinkansola sponsor had been asked to back off, I just smiled inwardly because we both knew he would not listen to the South West Bar leaders and so it turned out. Nobody respects yesterday’s horse rider. It’s the one on the mount that matters. And the election wasn’t even close between Egbe’s pick and the “renegade” winning candidate, though that won’t change the fact that Oyinkansola is leading a minority presidency. Those who voted against her, were more than those who voted for her but opposition split their votes. If Akangbe and Akinboro had joined forces! Many “Ifs”.

The president-elect is coming in with a lesson for numerous stakeholders and even herself, if her victory won’t bowl her over. One, as minority-elected, she would have to be expansive in victory magnanimity. Considering that just 38% of the eligible voters showed up, though the voting process was admittedly wonky and had to rescue at the last minute for the entire process not to be moribund,NBA itself has a lot of confidence rebuilding to do. Add the dwindling interest in voting, to allegedly compromised voting machines! Who would really want to show up next time if NBA election is deemed predetermined and fixed. A rigged system does nobody any good including those currently benefitting from it. Every empire will expire.

If I were INEC’s Joash Amupitan, himself a very senior lawyer and a professor of Law to boot, I will throw everything into making subsequent elections, starting with the August 15 Osun’s, a repudiation of the always-criticizing NBA, which in itself, has been conducting elections with micro-mini integrity in past years. If Amupitan can resist the temptation of the political class and not give guilty verdict to the innocent and acquittal to the guilty, he would have delivered a stinging rebuke to NBA which cant even conduct election for just 82,172 registered voters but always quick to condemn.

For Egbe Amofin Oodua, it’s time for deep soul-searching, starting with withdrawing from future endorsements especially when the buy-in of majority members, particularly the hothead hawks in the association, isn’t in.
And wait, is it me or the nomenclature itself sounds like having some esotericism to it; like some cult name?

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

Follow our WhatsApp Channel